1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the invention generally relate to computer software and associated tools, and more particularly to a software tool used for a business or organization to manage its workforce.
2. Description of the Related Art
In traditional office environments, businesses (i.e., companies and other types of organizations) tend to pay all expenses for an employee who works on-site (i.e. overhead relating to printing supplies, office space, telephones, internet access, etc.). Currently, there is a trend to move employees from traditional offices to home offices (i.e., telecommuting), which helps in significantly decreasing office overhead costs. In some cases, this trend has resulted in upwards of 40% of traditional employees becoming mobile employees, especially for IT (information technology)-related businesses. The term “mobile employee” used herein describes an employee without a permanent physical business/organizational office, and who may work at home or telecommute from some other location.
Mobile employees tend to have different technology needs from those in a traditional business office and most of these needs involve tools and services (i.e., cell phones, wireless data networks, wireless handheld computers, internet access, etc.) which are provided externally. The associated expenses involved in providing these tools and services are variable and are often the first ones reduced when the business is reducing costs in difficult financial times.
The expense budgets and associated processes related to mobile employees are often inflexible and difficult to effectively manage and may even create employee satisfaction/unsatisfaction issues. When the manager or business policies dictate too much detail on expenses, the employee can be dissatisfied and the expense allocation becomes inefficient. Moreover, businesses and organizations are consistently looking for ways to attract and retain their employees and to monitor employee productivity in light of internal budget requirements. Furthermore, for mobile employees, these concerns remain in effect, but are often more complicated to manage. Therefore, there remains a need for an automated objective tool that enables business and/or organizational managers to equitably assign employees a technology budget based on work location attributes and job attributes and for intelligent monitors that examine an employee's work patterns.